Eben Alexander (author)

This article is about the neurosurgeon and author. For his great-grandfather, see Eben Alexander.

Eben Alexander III
Born	December, 1953 Charlotte, North Carolina, USA
Nationality	USA
Occupation(s)	Writer, neurosurgeon
Website	http://www.lifebeyonddeath.net

Eben Alexander III (born December, 1953 in Charlotte, North Carolina) is an American neurosurgeon and the author of the best-selling Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon's Journey into the Afterlife, in which he describes his 2008 near-death experience and asserts that science can and will determine that heaven really does exist.

Biography

Education and training

Alexander attended Phillips Exeter Academy (class of 1972), University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (A.B., 1975), and the Duke University School of Medicine (M.D., 1980).

Alexander was an Intern in General Surgery at Duke University Medical Center, a resident at Duke, Newcastle (U.K.) General Hospital. He was a resident and research fellow at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital and is certified by the American Board of Neurological Surgery and the American College of Surgeons (F.A.C.S.).

Academic and clinical appointments

Alexander has taught at Duke University Medical Center, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, University of Massachusetts Medical School, and the University of Virginia Medical School.

He has had hospital appointments at Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston Children's Hospital, Dana–Farber Cancer Institute, Massachusetts General Hospital, University of Massachusetts Medical Center, and Lynchburg (Virginia) General Hospital-CentraHealth. He is currently an attending neurosurgeon.

Professional activities

Alexander is a member of the American Medical Association and various other professional societies. He has been on the editorial boards of various journals.

Proof of Heaven (2012)

Content

Alexander is the author of the autobiographical book Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon’s Journey into the Afterlife (2012) in which he asserts that his out of body and near death experience (NDE) while in a meningitis-induced coma in 2008 proves that consciousness is independent of the brain, that death is an illusion, and that an eternity of perfect splendor awaits us beyond the grave — complete with angels, clouds, and departed relatives, but also including butterflies and a beautiful girl in peasant dress who Alexander finds out later was his departed sister. According to him, the current understanding of the mind “now lies broken at our feet ”— for “What happened to me destroyed it, and I intend to spend the rest of my life investigating the true nature of consciousness and making the fact that we are more, much more, than our physical brains as clear as I can, both to my fellow scientists and to people at large.” Alexander’s book was excerpted in a Newsweek magazine cover story in October 2012. (In May 2012, Alexander had provided a slightly more technical account of the events described in his book in an article, "My Experience in Coma", in AANS Neurosurgeon, the trade publication of the American Association of Neurological Surgeons.)

Dr. Alexander's extraordinary experience in coma involved a juxtaposition of ultra-real aspects in the Gateway Realm (an idyllic valley that included earth-like features, but also spiritual aspects that provided clues as to its profound spiritual basis) and The Core (dwelling place of the infinite Source, a brilliant orb and purest consciousness) with a most primitive, coarse, unresponsive realm (the "Earthworm's Eye View") that Dr. Alexander interpreted as the best consciousness his brain could muster while "soaking in pus." He spent months working with colleagues trying to explain his ultra-real experiences as brain-based hallucinations, dreams or confabulations. Clues in his memories revealed that the vast majority of his coma odyssey occurred during days one through five of his seven day coma, at a time when his neurological exams and imaging studies showed his brain to be too damaged to allow for any but the most rudimentary of conscious  experiences (as in the coarse Earthworm's Eye View). He discussed nine of the hypotheses he and colleagues entertained in trying to explain his memories as brain-based phenomena, but in the end none of them explained his journey as "brain-based." Given the similarity of his experiences to tens of thousands of similar reports not just in the near-death experience literature, but also in the afterlife literature over three millennia, he asserted that his experience validated the reality of many other such experiences as occurring in a realm more real than the physical realm. He proceeded to elucidate the Hard Problem of Consciousness (that current neuroscience has not the remotest idea how the physical brain might give rise to consciousness), numerous non-local aspects of consciousness (that humans can know information far beyond the ken of their physical senses, as explained in great detail in the book Irreducible Mind: Toward a Psychology for the Twenty-first Century, by Edward F Kelly, Emily Williams Kelly, Adam Crabtree, Alan Gauld, Michael Grosso and Bruce Greyson, 2007), and the enigma of the interpretation of quantum mechanics as supporting his conclusion of the primary existence of consciousness, which then generates the rest of reality. He argues that this "filter theory" of consciousness, which goes back to the work of Carl Jung, William James and Frederic W.H. Myers, makes more sense in explaining his odyssey in coma, as well as so many other similar experiences of extraordinary consciousness, than his older conventional neuroscientific idea that the brain creates consciousness.

As of July 3, 2013, Proof of Heaven has been on the The New York Times Best Seller list for 35 weeks.

Dr Robert Mays, a near-death experience researcher with the International Association for Near Death Studies, wrote an objective analysis of the Esquire article (see Criticism, below) identifying numerous faults and distortions, finally concluding that Luke Dittrich and Esquire had committed journalistic malpractice through their blatant disregard for pursuing and conveying facts about Proof of Heaven and Dr. Eben Alexander.

Criticism

Alexander’s book and publicity campaign have been criticized by scientists, including neuroscientist Sam Harris, who described Alexander’s NDE account (chronicled in Newsweek, October 2012) as “alarmingly unscientific,” and that “everything — absolutely everything — in Alexander’s account rests on repeated assertions that his visions of heaven occurred while his cerebral cortex was 'shut down,' 'inactivated,' 'completely shut down,' 'totally offline,' and 'stunned to complete inactivity.' The evidence he provides for this claim is not only inadequate — it suggests that he doesn’t know anything about the relevant brain science.” “Even in cases where the brain is alleged to have shut down, its activity must return if the subject is to survive and describe the experience. In such cases, there is generally no way to establish that the NDE occurred while the brain was offline.” Neurologist and writer Oliver Sacks agreed with Harris, saying that "to deny the possibility of any natural explanation for an NDE, as Dr. Alexander does, is more than unscientific — it is antiscientific."..."The one most plausible hypothesis in Dr. Alexander's case...is that his NDE occurred not during his coma, but as he was surfacing from the coma and his cortex was returning to full function. It is curious that he does not allow this obvious and natural explanation, but instead insists on a supernatural one."

In November 2012, Alexander responded to critics in a second Newsweek article: "My synapses—the spaces between the neurons of the brain that support the electrochemical activity that makes the brain function — were not simply compromised during my experience. They were stopped. Only isolated pockets of deep cortical neurons were still sputtering, but no broad networks capable of generating anything like what we call 'consciousness.' The E. coli bacteria that flooded my brain during my illness made sure of that. My doctors have told me that according to all the brain tests they were doing, there was no way that any of the functions including vision, hearing, emotion, memory, language, or logic could possibly have been intact."

In a wider-ranging investigation of Alexander's story and medical background, Esquire magazine reported (August 2013 issue) that prior to the publication of Proof of Heaven, Alexander had been terminated or suspended from multiple hospital positions, and had been the subject of several malpractice lawsuits, including at least one involving the alteration of medical records to cover up a medical error. The magazine also found what it claimed were discrepencies with regard to Alexander's version of events in the book.

Alexander issued a statement after the Esquire article's publication:

External links

• Official website
• Curriculum Vitae